London rivers: City looks to unearth them

Over centuries, tributaries mistreated -- and paved over

LONDON — Stand outside the Old Tiger's Head pub in Lewisham, in southeast London, and through a manhole cover in the street you can hear the River Ravensbourne rushing incongruously underfoot.

Over the past five centuries, London has paved over, diverted into concrete channels or otherwise hidden away more than a dozen of its rivers, all tributaries to the Thames.

Fleet Street, London's famed newspaper row, sits atop the hidden River Fleet. The Tyburn and Strand have similarly been covered and incorporated into the city's sewer system. Altogether, 70 percent of London's 375 miles of river waterways are now substantially altered, with 30 percent encased in concrete channels and 10 percent entirely underground, according to the British Environment Agency.

But that is changing as officials -- spurred by improving water quality, growing flood risk and surging community interest in old rivers -- push to free London's lost rivers.

"There's been a general move to separate rivers from people, and a view these were environmental hazards you didn't want people to get involved with," said Dave Webb, manager of an Environment Agency effort to restore more than 23 miles of the rivers by 2015.

Now, he said, "rivers are coming back."

London's rivers have a fetid past. As the city developed, waterways gradually became depositories for much of the growing city's sewage, trash and industrial waste.

In 1858, unusually hot, dry weather and the widespread adoption of flush toilets combined to create such a clog of sewage and industrial waste in the sluggish Thames that the city suffered what has come to be known as The Great Stink. The rich, certain that the overpowering stench could kill, fled the city. The poor staggered around with handkerchiefs to their noses, praying for rain to push the mess downstream. Eventually it came.

For the next century, city officials -- eager to stem the stink and to acquire new land for building -- happily paved over sections of most of London's rivers. Flood-control experts later diverted many of those tributaries not hidden underground into high-sided concrete channels that effectively hid them from view. New houses and offices almost always faced away from the rivers.

Today, travelers who step out of the main train station at Lewisham would have little clue they were standing atop the confluence of two rushing tributaries of the Thames, the Ravensbourne and Quaggy Rivers, both hidden underground in concrete.

Half a block downstream, though, a section of Ravensbourne has been freed from its concrete channel.

Now, in a small park amid public housing blocks, mallards and mud hens bob in the riffles, chub and dace fish dart and passersby pause to watch, collect watercress growing at the river's edge or occasionally even dangle their feet in the water from a wooden platform built at the small river's fringe.

"There were a few doubters in the general public, who felt it was safer with the river stuck in concrete," said Martin Hodge, who heads open-space projects for the Lewisham council. "But at least if you fall in now you can pull yourself out."

Boosters in Lewisham, which has a somewhat downmarket reputation, hope to use the revitalized Ravensbourne to burnish its image to home buyers and businesses. Community studies also found that the opened-up riverbank should hold more water during heavy rains, reducing the risk of a repeat of record floods that hit the village in 1968.

Worries about flooding, particularly as climate change and increasingly variable weather take hold, are one of the main drivers of efforts to uncover these lost rivers. Right now "if you put out a flood warning, people don't know they're next to a river that could flood," Webb said.

Backers of the restoration project also hope to reduce vandalism and dumping of trash, a problem near decrepit waterways.

"The river is an asset that needs to be enjoyed," Hodge said. "If you hide them and try to forget about them, you're losing a great opportunity."

Not all of London's hidden rivers will be uncovered. The Fleet, in densely developed central London, is probably lost for good, Webb said. And the push to complete a last 9 miles of other Thames tributaries by 2015 may run up against the financial crisis. Restoring a river encased in concrete can cost as much as $1.1 million per mile, he said.

But he's confident the project will eventually be finished.

"When we first started this work, there was a lot of skepticism about the value of doing it," Webb said. "Then the communities saw the restored areas, and everybody wanted one."

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lgoering@tribune.com

Dispatches from Laurie Goering

Laurie Goering has reported stories from six continents for the Tribune. Read her reports at chicagotribune.com/goering